Umberto Eco is a major philosopher in his own right in the West. Many points he deliberately makes in the novel are deliberately anachronistic to make the point that Medieval and Modern thought are not very far apart. For instance, at pages 492.29-30/600.1-2, Eco quotes:

*Er muoz gelichessame die leiter abewerfen, so er an ir ufgestigen*,

ENGLISH:

*One must cast away, as it were, the ladder, so that he may begin to ascend it*

which is a version [Medievalized Eckhart-type German?] of Ludwig Wittgensteins *Er muss sozusagen die Leiter megwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist*, ENGLISH: *He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it* from Wittgensteins TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS (GERMAN: LOGISH-PHILOSOPHISCHE ABHANDLUNG,) translated into English by Pears and McGuiness that was first published in 1921/1922 under the auspices of his personal friend Bertrand Russell. THE KEY is very incomplete - for instance, the above allusion is missed - and anyone else who has additional information please contribute.

I shall start at the beginning of the novel and try to bring in other references to the best of my ability

Eco quotes at the very first of the POSTSCRIPT the Mexican poet Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz [1651-1695]-

*Rosa que al prado, encarnada/ te ostentas presumptuous/ de grana y carmin banada:/ campa lozana y gustosa;/ pero no, que siendo hermosa/ tambien seras dedicate*.

ENGLISH -

*Red rose growing in the meadow, you vaunt yourself bravely, bathed in crimson and carmine: a rich and fragrant show. But no: Being fair you will be unhappy soon.*

This Eco associates with Francois Villon's *Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan* - ENGLISH - *Where are the snows of yesteryear?*

It is slightly misleading on Eco's part since attention is deliberately diverted into the passage of time when the real issue as stated by William of Baskerville is *How can a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?* Adso's question is - *the first and last time in my life I dared to express a theological conclusion* - *But how can a necessary being exist totally poluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primigenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to his own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?*

PAGE 1 - Six days before the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, August 16, 1968, the editor/translator is *handed* the manuscript of Adso of Melk.

*THE NAME OF THE ROSE is a novel, a book as such per se, that should be read as much from the back to the front as front to back, and a much better version could be read from text into the margins and and even more vice versa. This is a text made to be annotated, preferably by the author, so extensively that the necessary annotations would take up far more space than the original text itself.

A doubled, expanded incident of this is the Latin hexameter at the literal end of the novel also annotated in the first paragraph of the POSTSCRIPT: *stat rosa pristine nomine, nomina nuda tenamus*. ENGLISH -
*Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names* the most ultimate expression of nominalism. It is from Bernard of Cluny's [a 12th century Benedictine] poem DE CONTEMPTU MUNDI, book I, line 952 - reflecting despair at the corruption of ecclesiastical institutions and finding human relief only in a *better afterlife* [from THE KEY].

The 'Nones' chapter reminded me, in its discussions of heresies, of the proliferations of Communist heresies under Stalin. The later were more intentionally directed and deliberate but, as Eco [Adso at first, and then with William] explains in this chapter and a slightly later one, another *nones* starting at page 196, there are political and economic forces deliberately utilizing these heretical movements for their own ends. In the second *NONES* chapter, Adso brings up Williams use of the term *the simple* which is not at all simple to him and William explains why, a multi-faceted kaleidoscope of contractions and expansions of its meaning depending of who is identified as such and who uses the term. That this miasma grew up more or less *naturally* in the Church - emphasizing the Church because of its claim to political power while still, in various degrees of *good conscience* vide Sartre, trying to be a spiritual *shepherd* - is fascinating and disturbing. Much of what I have read so far needs to be discussed in much greater detail.

I can give you translations of most of the Latin passages because I have THE KEY TO THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Haft & White/White. Most of the time they are unimportant or can be figured out of their own, but some are very important and interesting like the one on the LABYRINTH. So ask and give pages so I can locate/correlate.

There is a long history in the nominalism of William of Ockham behind this that is touched on in various places in the novel - if you really want to call it a novel. Corresponding to John Duns Scotus' and William of Ockham's destruction of most of Aquinas' 5 proofs of the existence of God there is an expansion of God's freedom that removes many of the logical delimitations of his nature and ability to act within finite time and space. What Aquinas does is create an Aristotlean model of God that, while necessary, is wholly outside finite human life, whereas the Fransciscan solution to this problem makes God more and more Ideally human and therefore directly able to effect human affairs. In other words, the moderate Realism of Aristotle establishes a perfect, permanent, and unchanging God whereas the Fransciscan version has a God able to violate logical categories and natural law.

This seems to be a very sensitive subject whose sensitivity I have never been aware of before. Eco actually, especially in his Aquinas book, makes the point relatively clearly, and Jud Evans does a good deal to push the same point - but I have not seen it plainly and bluntly said in an unequivocal fashion that all we know, all, is accidents - even natural laws, even mathematics in all of its branches - in reality we know these things historically, that is, in an accidental linear occurrence of learning, that is, how each of us as pure individuals learn the things we know - which means, however much we can say we agree on certain common truths, each of us learned them in a different fashion from each other. This means that although we intersect our different linear lines of learning at certain points and communicate some intelligible truth, nonetheless even knowing the sum of the angles of a triangle equal 90 degrees is approached in a completely different context by each of us and therefore must mean something different to each of us even though we do seem to possess some real ground of agreement in common knowledge. However, with this realization, one knows then actual *agreement* is an ambiguous thing even on such a narrowly defined subject - which means, as broader subjects are broached, real agreement declines rapidly and abstractions, as the words themselves, act as catchwords literally catching for each person what one perceives as similitudes as to what the other person is saying. Thereby one can have a discussion, think everyone agrees as to the premises but come to greatly differing conclusions.

The point Eco makes, when push comes to shove, we know no substantial forms. Substance as it is properly defined does not change through time. I think people have created a great number of equivocations about this, but the bottom line is everything changes with time. In an age of scientific ignorance, one could pretend something endures the same through a period of time. But now we know from any point of view, subjective or objective, observer or observed, perception of something actually enduring as the same from moment to moment is false. This is what happens when we cut theology out of all aspects of the equation - and even as I say that I am readmitting theological concepts through the back door in order even to say *all*. It is like erasing your footsteps in the sand as you walk along. You either must admit a purely subjective point of view or admit absolutely no point of view at all. Complete objectivity would erase the observer.

Theresa Coletti states there are *three major narrative threads of the novel: the intellectual and emotional education of the Benedictine novice and narrator Adso; the theological and political discussion of heresy and Franciscan activity and belief; and the murder mystery linked to . . . the discussion of laughter . . . *[37-8]. Adso in many ways is a far more major character than William - which destroys the comparison with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. William is interested in detail, facts, individuals, specifics whereas Adso wants the meaning of the whole. William is the scientist whereas Adso is the mystic. Fair warning should be given here that Eco has extensive and profoundly deep understanding of European mysticism. The implication in Eco seems to be - prove me wrong - that there is no direct opposition between strict and consistent science and the emotional motivations of mysticism. But this involves far too much of what I know on the issue to be discussed at this point, and also opens up the abyss of what I do not know at all about the matter - and Eco does. The motivations of mystics truly reflect the motivations of each and every single human being, most commonly reflected in the ordinary question that is none the less all encompassing
*What is the meaning of life?* One may well reject the logic of the question but one cannot reject the emotional identification with the question, its universal *pull*.

The fundamental clash of world views and yet their fundamental mirror reflections of each other - like all totally abstract issues divorced from specific individual material objects - is specifically displayed in the clash yet collaboration between the Benedictine and Franciscan worldviews. The anomalous relation between the Franciscan William [with his own anomalies in the ultimate mystic Saint Francis and the primordial scientist Roger Bacon] and the Benedictine Adso [with his own anomalies with his love of the rationalist Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the mystical Dominican Meister Eckhart combined with his brotherhood with the Benedictine Abbot Abo and his appreciation of the political and economic power of wealth] of master and student twists together in likeness and unlikeness like mirror strands of a DNA molecule - actually inseparable.

So Adso responds to William's response-question to Adso's original question, in the very midst of death, destruction and hell fire of the monastery, with another question:

*Do you mean, I asked, that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?* At that moment a section of the dormitory roof collapsed with a huge din, blowing a cloud of sparks into the sky . . . *There is too much confusion here,* William said. *Non in commotione, non in commotione Dominus.* THE KEY translates this as *The Lord is not in confusion, not in confusion*, and says it is derived from 1 KINGS 19:11-12 - *And after the wind an earthquake; but the lord was not in the earthquake [commotione]: And after the earthquake a fire; but the lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.*

This is the *end* of the novel proper.

In SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, chapter 4 Symbol, section 6 Conclusions, Eco ends the chapter with this - *In any case, behind every strategy of the symbolic mode, be it religious or aesthetic, there is a legitimating theology, even though it is the atheistic theology of unlimited semiosis or of hermeneutics as deconstruction. A positive way to approach every instance of the symbolic mode would be to ask: which theology legitimates it?*

August 22, 1968, might then be construed as the beginning of the end of the last major logically consistent theological state. This could well have been evident to an acute political analyst - and who could possibly be more politically acute than an Italian? - in 1980, the year of the publication of THE NAME OF THE ROSE.

In general, I think both Ecos and Michael Crichtons turning to the novel form to disseminate their ideas may have to do with discouragement in teaching students or learning from professors. The classroom has become a poor means of presenting ideas. In fact, I think Jud Evans has - for instance in the comments I just read - found the best way to present straight material for learning from one person to another. He relies, though, on a reduction ad absurdum, an ability to show either a subject can or cannot be reduced to laughter. Satire is always near by in Juds thinking. Of course it comes easily to him because his prime criteria is, Does it work in real life like that or not?

So Jud can pursue a discourse at length, yet pull up the reader abruptly by always coming back to literal specifics, that is, *this* and *that* whereas traditional teaching has a broad swathe to carve in a large number of students minds which inescapably means employing abstractions abundantly while hoping the logical rules of their use also being taught are harshly taken to heart - yet knowing the easy way of sliding through a subject with abstractions is all too appealing to a student trying to pass a course.

In politics, they are called *buzz words*, that is, they trigger - if the student knows the teachers weakness - the desired response. But very little is actually learned through hard work, that is, working through each step and understanding why each step is unavoidably necessary. This is Crichtons point. Literally working through the steps of the history of science - for instance having to do by hand analyses that took weeks and months to do when, now, we pop it in a machine and get results in a couple of minutes at most - gives us a real picture of the result, a result constructed as much by the labor put into it as the object purportedly sitting there by itself, something that is lost when using the machine, that is, the physical *distance* or *effort* necessary to achieve a result which is now entirely done by machine, and by which we skip the steps still materially necessary to obtain that result but erased from our consciousness in the labor saving machine. This actually encourages a loss of knowledge of what is physically going on. And it is most evident in people using calculators of more and more sophistication in doing higher mathematics while they literally forget - or never even learned - the basic, down in the dirt ways of simple subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division. They simply do not understand any longer what they have conveniently bypassed with their calculators, and though they have access to dealing with numbers in highly abstract fashion getting fantastic results, no longer understand what the numbers were originally meant to refer to, that is, one orange, one apple.

It is the quandary of knowing you can do it, but not wondering should you do it - which I misunderstood before as a moral question when in fact it is a question of methodological competency. People take it as a joke that math professors can do quadratic equations but cannot balance their checkbook - but the humor of that has now departed for me as I more and more see Crichtons point that knowing how to solve a specific problem that is highly complex while ignoring the general, wider context that problem is solved in might be extremely dangerous - and irrevocable.

In reading Ecos novels, I see much the same thing from a very different point of view. What is presented as a sterilized abstraction academically can, when placed even in a invented but realistic world of real people acting with normal human motives, shows things that seem to be merely tic-tac-do games in academia can kill people in real life.

One key to the understanding of the novel is, relatively, how bad and misleading the movie is - in comparison. Obviously it is superior to movies of a similar type and subject. But, once again compared to the novel, it shows itself as a vastly inferior media by which to communicate ideas. This is relevant to education theory.

Chapter *Nones* [142-154] is of great interest A movie is an abstraction of the novel controlled by the nature of the conversion from one medium to another. This applies not only to audio-visual aides in the classroom but also the very presentation verbally and textbook-wise to the student by the teacher. They do not - usually - DO what they teach, or, as the common American saying goes, If you cannot do it, teach it, referring to people who teach business and science. Things are vastly compressed and abridged for immediate though often highly confusing digestion. This is supposed to be the presentation of knowledge in a compact form that is still validly the same as the knowledge that is compressed.

But just as I made the point about modern science not laboriously being worked through, in an *ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny* form, where one goes through the primitive laborious processes of doing something, for instance making fire from rubbing sticks or chipping flint to striking a phosphorus match, so as to understand how we came about the modern machine that helps in scientific research. This is not to denigrate modern science. In fact modern science is impossible without these machines. As the contemporary villain Robert Doniger says in Michael Crichtons TIMELINE [pg. 141, Ballantine paperback], *But today, no important scientific discovery could be made with such simple tools. The sciences are utterly dependent on advanced technology* [Crichton also says a number of very interesting things about Quantum mechanics - it is a very interesting book to read alongside Ecos THE NAME OF THE ROSE as both books demonstrate mixed interpolation of very modern science with moderate teachers modern science with medieval science].

But with the educational compression and abridgement, crucial historical understanding of ideas - both Eco and Crichton make the same point in different ways - is wholly lost, and what knowledge the educator is trying to convey to the student is almost entirely lost or distorted in the process. Unless the student supplements his studies with a vast amount of reading - and therefore labor, the basic structure of *value* in both Adam Smith and Karl Marx - what he learns simply in class is mediocre at best. In some ways, military education - or variations of a similar theme such as hands-on-business to learn the real working of economics -is a far better model for educating in depth than academic education. In the military, the drill sergeant breaks the recruit down to nothing, no self confidence, no reliance on *previous knowledge* [mere assumptions]. Then the drill sergeant builds up the recruit again from nothing by learning every single material step needed for a knowledge of working military science. And it has always been a science, or appreciative of science, as Crichtons TIMELINE demonstrates. This is what they do at West Point. There you learn improvisation, technology and the limits of technology, and the philosophy of strategy which stands next door to outright politics. In France, after graduating from St. Cyr, the student does not become an officer automatically but rather becomes a buck private and for two years is expected to work his way up the ranks to sergeant before he can really become an officer. I think this is a methodology directly held over from the French Revolution, not the royal military schools like Napoleon attended. So they know how to clean and maintain a rifle, how to repair a tank, how to calculate artillery fire in the field, etc, before they get the privileged, but minimal, rank.

So in contrast to this we might put modern education. How so exactly? Why specifically this contrast? What contrast am I referring to exactly? Military education actually reflects a much older form of education that has gone out of style since the formation of modern universities, specifically universities in the 20th century. First, what is the overall form of a modern university education? It is to teach you to qualify for a job, a mere blind process of life, according to other peoples demands. How so? The graduate is a person qualified to perform certain functions, not to determine ends or purposes - that is the employers right only. How is this different from a military education? The end purpose of an ordinary *job* is not yours, in fact, the end purpose has little or nothing to do with you. You may not even know what the end purpose really is, or it changes from year to year according to the newest catch words or form of corporate image. All that belongs to your employer, not you. This is true even of a university professor. Universities completely ceased to be repositories of tradition and overall recognized purpose in the middle of the twentieth century, if not earlier, and became mere job factories.

But the basic values of the military man had to remain at least formally the same or the morale of the military declined drastically and publicly. There are numerous examples of this in newly independent countries as opposed to countries with an established military tradition. The basic values also were materially welded to a military education - essentially survival although the aspect of survival had to be forcibly changed from the individual - as in a modern university - to survival as a unit whether the smallest or the largest. This meant the identity of the members of a unit had to be maintained as a unit, and one way of doing this was maintaining the traditions of the unit either as a part or as a whole. I had a little bit of this when I was in the army - but I had unusual circumstances. Jud probably have much more of this in the British Army.

What I am saying is that the military maintained aspects of the medieval guild system. That system was reflected in every aspect of learning a profession. The universities of the time also reflected this, and when you graduated from a university you still went into a master-apprentice relationship. Some professions today still reflect this as when a new lawyer joins a law firm. But not many professions operate that way any more, and there is little tradition in a law firm. You were apprenticed to a master and worked your way up starting at the most menial tasks until you were a master yourself. You learned all the traditions and meanings, the religious? Philosophical? symbolism of your profession, all of its history, a Why for everything you do that could change only if you achieved master hood yourself. The guild of architects, the Masons, is one of the most outstanding large guilds. Though little is known about the medieval guild of masons - keeping it, with difficulty since they were connected, separate from the Knights Templar and the later political aspect of Masons in the American Revolution and the Illuminati in its attack on the sovereigns of middle Europe during the approximate time of the French revolution - it is known, since it is carved in the hard to see corners of all the great cathedrals, they maintained the explicit symbolism of the Celtic gods and made common decorations like gargoyles still hard to explain being on purported Christian places of worship and wholly contradictory to the spirit and letter of Christianity. So essentially they were a society completely unto themselves. And most certainly, despite minor outward trapping at times, the military maintained a world view far closer to paganism than to the literal teachings of the Church. And every co-operation between the military, or politics, and the Church had a material reward usually for both but always for the military. So they also were a society unto themselves. The military and medieval guilds had members who shared a common purpose, a common understanding of the world from their professional point of view, and either kept it secret or assumed no one else would really be interested because they did not share the same values. So, where do we place scientists in this scheme I have described which is a public and established fact? They are products of the modern university. One might see a difference between academics and scientists working for corporations. But I find this ambiguous. What do you think?

Adso is merely comic relief in the movie, whereas he is as crucial as William or Jorge in the novel. Those three represent three fundamentally different approaches to the same object of thinking. What this object is, is hard for me to identify. For one thing, a major - maybe THE major theme, in THE NAME OF THE ROSE is the identity of differences and difference within identities. One difference that MAY retain its form is the difference between the *simple* and the *philosophical*. Another major difference/identity is the love of God equal to the love of the flesh equal to the love of the mind [there are TWO, actually THREE, maybe four, different love scenes in synchronic and diachronic contiguity staring with Adsos conversation with Ubertino where the nature of sex is thoroughly confused, leading to Adsos confusion and rebelliousness against William that leads him alone in into the library where he remembers the religious ecstasy of a hertic burned at the stake in Florence, then his hasty departure from the library to the kitchen where he discovers a naked girl and confuses the mysticism of the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon or Canticle of Canticles with the discovery of real flesh - for Adso a mass of real and distinct differences made the same in actual experience
- and it is explicitly stated as being such by Eco]. Jorge most definitely belongs to the later, the philosophical, and not the former, the *simple*. That is made clear himself as he himself distinguishes himself from the
*simple* whereas William sees a similarity to them within himself, or rather his moral purposes, whereas Adso is a definite combination of the
*simple* and the *philosophical* - but then he is the one who most often finds identity in difference and differences in identity and therefore carries most of the burden of the central theme of the novel. In the movie Jorge is merely a narrow minded fanatic whereas in the novel one can see the rational necessity of his line of thought from his premises also accepted by the majority of people in the modern world, especially educators, politicians, and military leaders. William and Adso are out of place or out of date or simply contradictory to this way of thinking. It is Jorge who is most *Modern*. But you have to read the novel to understand why. Jorge is the *Organizer*, the CEO of the mind.

Considering how he has changed the major format of his writing to, at first, the novel where he can put both his own, *new* ideas [Eco has no illusions how *original* his ideas are - he is explicit about this in the POSTSCRIPT and elsewhere] next to old ideas of many different sorts - reflecting many different kinds of people, that is, a real world of people in contrast if not in outright conflict - with old ideas that have demonstrated longevity if not necessarily accuracy - although *accuracy* is shown to be, at least in part, merely a *point of view* of methodological application where many times an *old* idea that *failed* is now become a successful *new* idea, applied in a different manner - like Idealistic abstract thinking for instance. It does not have to be *True* in order to work and achieve its goal. This is a point William recognizes about his detecting method in his conversation with Jorge, that is, he arrived at the right conclusion from the wrong premises. Eco has, secondly, changed the format of his *academic* writing to one with a great deal of humor and irony in it, both laughing at himself and laughing at the seriousness of the human beings around him. In a sense this shows his *academic* writing is taking second place in importance to his novels because the *academic* position now presupposes more fundamental propositions than it puts forward, propositions explicitly stated in the dramatic argument in the library labyrinth between William and Jorge where the ultimates of life and death are both literally and philosophically the issue and literally at hand, a debate that Adso in fact concludes with William in the midst of the horror and devastation of the monastery, thus insuring his ultimate importance in the novel completely ignored in the movie. It is Jorge who perfectly defines the importance of Book II of the POETICS:

QUOTE

*Here the function of laughter is reversed [from being *base, a defense of the simple, a mystery desecrated for the plebians . . . Elect your king of fools, lose yourselves in the liturgy of the ass and the pig, play at performing your saturnalia head down*], it is elevated to art, the doors of the world of the learned are opened to it, it becomes the object of philosophy, and of perfidious theology . . . .* [and from the preceding page] William: *Why does this one [POETICS Bk II] fill you with such fear?* Jorge: Because it was by the philosopher. Every book by that man has destroyed a part of the learning that Christianity has accumulated over the centuries . . . Boethius had only to gloss the Philosopher and the divine mystery of the Word was transformed into a human parody of categories and syllogism . . . But he had not succeeded in overturning the image of God. If this book were to become . . . had become an object for open interpretation, we would have crossed the last boundary . [474 resumed] Then what in the villein is still and operation of the belly would be transformed into an operation of the brain . . . But from this book many corrupt minds like yours would draw the extreme syllogism, whereby laughter is mans end! Laughter, for a few moments, distracts the villein from fear. But [475] law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God. This book could strike the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to the whole world, and laughter would be defined as the new art, unknown even to Prometheus, for cancelling fear. . For the villein who laughs, at that moment, dying does not matter: but then, when the license is past, the liturgy again imposes on him, according to the divine plan, the fear of death. And from this book there could be born the new destructive aim to destroy death through redemption from fear. And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts? . . . But on the day when the Philosophers word would justify the marginal jests of the debauched imagination, or when what has been marginal leap to the center, every trace of the center would be lost . . . A Greek philosopher [whom your Aristotle quotes here, an accomplice and foul auctoritas] said that the seriousness of opponents must be dispelled with laughter, and laughter opposed with seriousness.*

END QUOTE GARY RETURNED:

The problem, for Jorge, is not only laughing at God but laughing at death as Bakhtin show Rabelais doing with his characters. I do not think Jorge directly says it but I think Jorge, like Martin Luther, hinged the whole question of real human immortality not on anything God has done or will do or given us, etc, but hinged it purely on the fear of death. Not on Hell fire, though Jorge like Luther speaks a lot about damnation, but on the
*blackness of darkness* [Jude], life simply ending and the erasure of the personality. He certainly accuses laughter of destroying the disciplining fear of death much as Hamlet did from the opposing point of view:
*Who would put up with all this crap if one could end it with a bare bodkin.*

It would be much knowledge without form as I said above about modern universities versus medieval guilds. It is far too glib and easy dismissal of guilds as *outdated ideas* especially when those ideas keep being repeated piecemeal in contemporary history - and, being piecemeal, fail since their ultimate purpose is *out in the world* that does not care about context and meaning and not *in themselves* - for instance, labor unions. Guilds may have had less numbers in members but they had much more political influence in their time. Purpose asks what is the form of my life, its meaning, not in a supernatural way - other way to put your life in the hands of outsiders - but in the form of material accomplishment and practical actions - like avoiding death, surviving.

No, not scholars, monks, men religiously devoted to books as such, books of any sort whatsoever. Petronius SATYRICON was preserved in a Yugoslavian monastery, possibly an inspiration or source for Eco. They were devoted, firstly, PHYSICALLY to books. Secondly their reproduction - AND DECORATION which was related to interpretation- and then thirdly actually reading them. Never was scholarly work, in the modern sense of the term, ever performed by the monks other than casual checks for literal accuracy inefficiently carried out. And only around the Renaissance did they think to write their own books about these books unless they were being trained for an academic career like Thomas Aquinas - and then, much of the time, he did not himself write his books but dictated them to others.

I do not think he is a book lover for the sake of the individual books like the other monks are. To them, the books are as much works of art in the very fullest sense of the term. In fact, the approach of the actual copyists does not simply reproduce the text - nor even simply decorate the text with pleasing art - but in the marginalia provides a space either for verbal commentary or pictorial ridicule of the seriousness of the text. Whereas William is an information collector. In this regard, he is different from both Jorge - who had been a former librarian and collected books, especially copies of REVELATIONS from his native Spain - and Adso who takes all images both in the books and in the church, including the inner library, with the greatest seriousness whereas William pays little or no attention to either.

The book is an excuse to have a mystery. When Jorge and William have their final debate William admits he came to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons. And, even more, it is difficult - I think very deliberately so - to discover the actual culpability of Jorge in the murders which at point poin the seems to admit yet at other points he seems to deny either wholly or in part. And this is when he fully understands that William has *caught* him so, as he says himself, there is no reason any longer to deny his part in the events. The question that remains despite all is, What were the events actually?

QUOTE (page 492)

ADSO: [in the face of Williams despair at solving the crimes]

*I could go on listing all the true things you discovered with the help of your learning . . .* WILLIAM: *I have never doubted the truth of the signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand was the relation among signs. I arrived at Jorge through an apocalyptic pattern that seemed to underlie all the crimes, and yet it was accidental. I arrived at Jorge seeking one criminal for all the crimes and we discovered that each crime was committed by a different person, or by no one . . . Where is all my wisdom then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well there is no order in the universe.*

END QUOTE

GARY AGAIN: There is much more of importance in that scene - William quotes Wittgenstein - but the point is the break down of communication - wholly - because there is no order in the universe [this is a simple way to put it - read the chapter to get the full meaning]. If there is no order in the universe, there can be no difference. No difference between heretic and orthodox. And especially no difference between the love of God as *spiritual* and the love of God as passion and sex. Ubertino really confuses Adso on this point. The passion of the Florentine heretic to be burnt astonished him. And then he meets a real woman and describes his feeling through the imagery of the SONG OF SONGS - which was a favorite text of monks and mystics - if there is any difference. I have known about the popularity of the SONG OF SONGS in the Cloister for a long time - but *scholar* wise it is always explained *spiritually* whereas poor Adso is confronted with real people who put real life into that text in the real world in one immediate event after another - the discussion of the Virgin Mary with Ubertino in the church, the rebellious trip to the library immediately afterward thinking of the passion of the Florentine heretic, then, frightened, stumbling into the kitchen upon a naked girl straight out of the BIBLE - a text proper people no longer read. But in his monkish tradition it was the most important book in the whole BIBLE - something the Catholics know very well today, but would like to forget. I find Christians absolutely amazing in their selective blindness.

Theresa Coletti says the sex scene is the central scene of the whole book, and I agree. Unless you understand its importance, you do not understand the novel. And right in the middle of the debate Adso witnesses between Jorge and William, Adso thinks to himself:

QUOTE pages 472-473
*I realized, with a shudder, that at this moment these two men, arrayed in a mortal conflict, were admiring each other, as if each had acted only to win the others applause. The thought crossed my mind that the artifices Berengar used to seduce Adelmo, and the simple and natural acts with which the girl had aroused my passion and my desire, were nothing compared with the cleverness and mad skill each used to conquer the other, , nothing compared with the act of seduction going on before my eyes at that moment . . . Each fearing and hating the other.

END QUOTE

GARY AGAIN:

What more proof could you need showing the centrality of passion in the novel over intellect, passion using intellect for its own purposes, than this? And where would a teacher, an academic go after realizing this in his own text other than to writing novels or papers couched in self-mocking humor?

UNIVOCITY, EQUIVOCITY, AND ANALOGICAL THINKING In reading about Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, the central problem is the definition of *God*. This is of central concern to us, first of all, because how can one debate the existence of something that one has not defined? That there are many off-handed and slack proposals for a definition as well as equally slack denials is not to be denied but is totally pointless since real issues are rarely confronted. In reading Ecos thesis on THE AESTHETICS OF THOMAS AQUINAS and THE NAME OF THE ROSE, as well as SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, his putting the issue squarely on the actual use and living nature of language - am I being univocal or equivocal in the use of that image here? - I think is of essential interest to analytical-indicant theory, nominalism, existential modality and eliminative. Secondly, I think analogical thinking - actually another but more literal name for abstract thinking - corrupts a clear confrontation between theistic and a-theistic thinking since the very preservation of an abstract entity such as
*language* is thoroughly loaded with spiritualistic connections people are very loath to give up. And actually those connections are not of minor value since they involve our responses to not only poetry and beautiful literature but to all art of any sort we want to call beautiful. This is one of the things Eco barely touched on, hinted at in his thesis but was thoroughly present as a background because art is regarded, even by atheistic artists like James Joyce, as the last of the *divine* pursuits by human beings.

Eco faced up to this obliquely in his discussion of aesthetic value in Aquinas. It is, bluntly, use value, the perfect attaining of an object of its purpose - actually its ideal purpose - and being *ideal* gaining its value within the scheme of Gods creation. So such a *use value* in Aquinas is neither simply pragmatic nor Adam Smith laissez faire economic. But if you remove God from such a scheme then all that is left is pragmatic and economic. Thereupon someone like James Joyce wants to rescue the value of art by postulating *art for arts sake*. This should immediately set off a number of red lights and warning bells because of its immediate relationship of the a-theistically sacred *science for sciences sake*. The disinterestedness of art is related directly to the disinterestedness of science. The one goes down with the other.

Science as the sacred cow of atheism is demonstrated in the aspect of *natural law* replacing *divine law*. They are motivated by one and the same impulse. The beauty and grandeur of *natural law* is that it is something *beyond* and *above* our insignificant physical individuality. The same applies to mathematics when in fact each of us can only approach and learn about these things in our particular, materially individualistic, historical manner, in out singular slant, in our peculiar manner, working out rough disagreements - yes- but in psychological actuality never ever approaching the same thing exactly the same way as anybody else. In essence, science is a pragmatic compromise of individual approaches. This is also precisely where *new* approaches to problems come from so you can have a Kopernican solar system grow out of a Ptolemaic one and an Einsteinian universe grow out of a Newtonian one. No one sees anything, anything at all, exactly the same as anyone else. In other words, all scientific approaches are fundamentally accidental - limited by our personal physicality - and our immediate temporality and mortality. Nothing lasts forever. Why? Because you cannot know *forever*.

Another problem Eco barely broached, and again I think deliberately, is that if Aquinas based his approach thoroughly on physical objects of human experience then, ultimately, the only justification of a belief in God would have to be a direct, physical experience of God - which of course is thoroughly problematic. You cannot go around pointing to a *this* and saying *this* is an infinite, all powerful, all knowing God. And yet if you base your approach to theology on physical objects of human experience, you must approach a definition of God only, on the one hand, negatively - saying God is not *this* and not *that* of qualities of our physical experience and thereby saying his infinitude is the *opposite* of our limitation. But in actuality we can for absolutely no idea of a complete absence of limitation - something proponents of *natural law* and the *infinity of the universe* have also asked us to accept, saying this is a-theistic when in fact it is exactly the same demand.

Or you can approach the problem *positively* by saying, for instance, you know what wisdom is, ergo God is simply the perfection of wisdom which you already understand in human imperfection. Again, though, this is merely analogical because you cannot possibly know what *perfection* is. Whenever you say something is *perfect* it is always merely in comparison to something less perfect. *Ah! You have drawn this triangle perfectly!* Not under a microscope. All you know of *perfection* is merely relative. And then someone brings in non-Euclidean geometry and the whole business goes out the window. No one sees the same thing exactly the same way.

So if God exists, you have to experience him - and, worse still, know what you have experienced is God and not the Devil. Purportedly Aquinas experienced something at the end of his life which made him say all of his work was *straw*. Well, it is worse than that, it was a lie if it became *straw* because direct experience invalidated all he said he *proved*. *Faith*, then, however you take it, is necessarily a lie because it gives form to something you in fact do not know - and cannot express in words if you do - whether it is in God or the infinity of the universe.

Now I have not broached the problem of univocal meaning to words used for extremely disparate objects. However, some kind of univocal relationship is intended. One can say, for instance, the universe is immeasurable. This is problematic because even if one said this universe does have finite limits, none the less there is a point outside - at least theoretically - the finite universe which means there is a *more* of some sort. Even Aquinas touched on this embarrassing point obliquely - the point being, if God necessarily created the universe because all things start somewhere, somehow, then what created God - actually evaded the point explicitly of creation at a specific time and place, and implicitly threw the basic problem on the problem, in such a situation, of what does the word *God* mean. This is problematic because contingent existence is dependent on extrinsic factors even if we do not really know what they are - because we know contingency is always dependent on something else. Or is it? And if we try to answer this question, will we be falling into the trap of creating another mythology? This is in fact one of the problems of saying everything is accidental. We know it is all accidental because we can easily understand how things could be otherwise. So, is my use of the word *accidental* theological? But then how can we know something about what is not utterly contingent? I am expressing this very poorly.

TRANSLATIONS OF LATIN AND OTHER PHRASES

PAGES
1.24/xiii. 24 - from French * The Manuscript of Dom Adso of Melk, translated into French and based on the edition of J. Mabillion.

Abbe * priest or abbot Dom * Benedictine title short for Dominus * lord.

2.15-26/xiv. 25-37 Vetera analecta, sive collectio, et seq. * An Ancient Comilation or A Collection of Several Ancient Works

2.31-32/xv. 4-5 * Montalant, near the bank of the Augustinian Fathers [beside the Bridge of Saint Michel]

3.13-14/xv. 30-32 - from French * [on going over these details, I've reached the point of wondering whether they're real or I have dreamed them]

4.38-39/xvii. 35-37 * The Book of Accumulated Thoughts or The Book of Secrets of Albert the Great, London [beside the bridge commonly known as the fleet bridge] , 1485

LATIN PHRASES 2

5.1/xviii. 34-38 * the Great and the Little Albert

5.36-39/xviii. 34-38 - from French * The Admirable Secrets of Albert the Great, Lyons [House of the Beringos Heirs, Brothers, at the sign of Agrippa],1775; *the Marvelous Secrets of the Natural and Cabalistic Magic of the Little Albert*,Lyons [House of etc.

5.12-13/xviii. 16 - from French *Good Lord, yes!* and *[The] woman, ah, [the] woman!*

5.31-32/xix. 6-7 *I have sought tranquility in everything, but found it nowhere except in a corner with a book.* This has overtones from Ecclesiasticus 24:7, Thomas a Kempis, and Meister Eckhart.

NOTE

7.15-8.9/xx. 18-xxi14 - from French *The Benedictine Hours* Matins - morning, Lauds - Prayers of Praise, Prime - first hour, Terce - third hour, Sext - sixth hour, Nones - ninth hour, Vespers - evening, Compline - end of day

PROLOGUE

12.21/4.34 *Head of the World* - satirical description of Rome

13.11/5.32 *his to use* - Usus facti, the use in fact of necessary things vs. usus iuris, thr right of use or possession, relate Franciscan poverty, see 335/403

17.25/11.14 *with only one man in control*

17.28/11.18 *in the manner of a bird flying

FIRST DAY, Sunday, first day of Advent

21.19 *huge building*

23.9/17.30 *Browny*

23.37-39/18.28-30 *Every creature of the world,/like a picture and a book,/appears to us as a mirror.* [Alanus] NEXT STANZA *The rose depicts our station, a fitting explanation of our lot, which while it blooms in early morning, ¡flowers out¢, the flower deflowered [defloratus flos effloret]* See 279.1-5/333.22-27

24.25/19.24 *firm, with the skin closely outlining the bones* from Isidore of Seville¢s ETYMOLOGIES*

24.31/19.32 *authorities*

25.38/21.11 *bathhouse*

27.23-28.1/24.8 *universal concept* [word of the mind] Aquinas - conceptual sign formed by the mind itself, the concept abstracted by the mind from the individual object of perception - a mental sign

28.15/24.26 *black*

33.22/31.8 *writing room*, distinctive feature of Benedictine monasteries

34.16-17/32.7-8 *You will be a priest forever*

34.35/32.30 *in the monk¢s presence*

LATIN PHRASES 3

34.35/32.30 *in the monk¢s presence*

36.5-8/34.9-12 *A monastery without books . . . is like a city without wealth, a fortress without troops, a kitchen without utensils, a table without food, a garden without plants, a meadow without flowers, a tree without leaves . . . * Jakob Louber, Carthusian monastery of Basel

36.28/34.38 *The world is growing old*. See Eco 11.11.3.13

SEXT
46.19-26/47.9-18 *Repent! Watch out for the dragon who cometh in future to gnaw your soul! Death is upon us! Pray the holy father come to free us from evil and all our sin! Ha, ha, you like this black magic of our Lord Jesus Christ! To me as well joy is pain, and pleasure painful . . . Beware the devil! Always lying in wait for me in some corner to snap my heels. But Salvatore is not stupid! Good is the monastery and the dining-hall here and pray to our Lord. And the rest is not worth shit. Amen. No?* confusion of vulgar Latin, Provencal, Italian, and Spanish/Catalan.

47.7/48.5 *by agreement*

47.17/48.17 *scattered fragments* see Eco 11.6-7/3.6-8

47.24-25/48.27 8[if I may compare small things with great . . .] Virgil, GEORGICS

4.176, industry of bees to Cyclops at the forge

47.34-35/49.1-3 *My lord brother most magnificent, Jesus is about to come and men must do penitence. No?*

47.39/49.6 *I do not understand*

48.4-5/49.12 *get thee behind me* Mark 8:31-33

49.3/50.20 *The Tree of the Crucified Life* PARADISO XII, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio criticizes Ubertino for excessive Franciscan strictness, Eco 53.5/55.27.

51.19-20/53.24-25 *brothers and poor hermits of Dom Celestine* - Celestine V, VERY interesting and unusual pope [Boniface VIII]

52.9/54.20 *With Firm Precaution* Bull of Boniface VIII issued 1296

53.17/56.3-4 *I have left Paradise* Bull on fruits of the Council of Vienne, October 1311-May 1312, issued by Pope Clement V, May 6,1312, affirmed poverty of Franciscans but suppressed criticism of opposing parties in the order about what *poverty* meant.

54.1-2/56.30-31 *traveled throughout the world as a vagabond*
55.38/59.7-8 *To the Founder of the Rules* Bull by John XXII, Dec. 8,1322, against Franciscan chapter Perugia. John rejects usus facti [use in fact] and makes Fraciscans own things they used against their will. See Eco 339/408.